News linked to this event type.
According to an announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice, Eastern District of New York Office of the United States Attorney, two Chinese citizens, Zhuoying Chen (aka "Jolene", 27, Brooklyn) and Haojie Zhang (aka "Kevin", 38, Queens), were formally indicted on July 16 at the Brooklyn Federal Court on charges of conspiracy to launder money. According to the allegations, between 2020 and 2022, the two managed a money laundering network of more than ten people in Queens and Brooklyn, New York, using approximately 45 shell companies and 140 corporate bank accounts to transfer at least $43 million in proceeds from "pig butchering" investment fraud to accounts within China. "Pig butchering" scams contact victims through social media or instant messaging software, gaining trust with false high-return investment opportunities before absconding with the funds. This case was jointly investigated by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the FBI, IRS-CI, and the United States Postal Inspection Service. If convicted, the two defendants each face up to 20 years in prison.
BitPay 发文表示，其荷兰实体 BitPay B.V. 已获荷兰金融市场管理局（AFM）授权，成为《加密资产市场监管法案》（MiCA）框架下的加密资产服务提供商（CASP），可在欧盟范围内提供受监管的加密服务。
According to Reuters, the PayPal board believes the $53 billion acquisition offer ($60.50 per share) jointly proposed by Stripe and private equity firm Advent International undervalues the company, and has concerns regarding regulatory approval risks and financing certainty; it has not yet formally responded to the proposal. The PayPal board believes that if management successfully executes the existing transformation strategy, the company's future potential value will far exceed the current offer. Meanwhile, the acquirers have obtained approximately $50 billion in financing support from JPMorgan Chase and Morgan Stanley, with Stripe and Advent contributing a combined $17 billion in equity. Reportedly, if the parties encounter antitrust hurdles, they may consider divesting assets such as PayPal's Braintree to Advent. Despite differences, Stripe and Advent are still regarded as the most serious potential buyers at present, and negotiations are expected to continue for some time. PayPal will release its quarterly earnings report on July 28, and the market will closely monitor the growth of its core checkout business.
According to The Block, U.S. "Clarity Act" crypto legislation has entered a critical phase, with Representative William Timmons stating, "Legislation will definitely be completed; this is one of the president's priorities and also a bipartisan consensus." Senate Majority Leader John Thune hopes to complete the Senate vote before the recess on August 7, but even if passed by the Senate, the bill still needs to return to the House of Representatives for deliberation, and the overall timeline may extend into the coming months. The current main point of contention lies in the ethics clauses regarding how to restrict federal officials, such as the President, Vice President, and members of Congress, from benefiting from digital assets during their term. Trump, Republican Senators Bernie Moreno and Cynthia Lummis, along with White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, held a meeting on Thursday afternoon regarding the ethics clauses, seeking Trump's endorsement. Democratic Senator Ruben Gallego stated that if the ethics clauses do not meet standards, Democrats will not vote in support. Blockchain Association CEO Summer Mersinger is cautiously optimistic about the bill's prospects but warned that if prediction market-related amendments are included, they will become a "poison pill" and should be addressed through separate legislation.
Bilal bin Saqib, Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA), has requested Jamia Darul Uloom Karachi to clarify the distinction between speculative cryptocurrencies and asset-backed digital tokens, following the religious institution’s ruling that cryptocurrency-based purchases are not compliant with Islamic law. The ruling pertains to a consultation on using cryptocurrencies to pay for books and online course fees. Waqas Ghani, Head of Research at JS Global Capital, stated that the ruling could hinder bank-led cryptocurrency adoption in Pakistan, but trading volumes have not yet been affected. Saqib stated that PVARA is working with scholars to evaluate digital assets by category, rather than treating them as a single class. He noted that blockchain-recorded Sukuk represent ownership of real income-generating assets, while gold-backed tokens and fully-reserved stablecoins correspond to redeemable value. He added that speculative tokens without underlying assets fall into a different category, and scholars' concerns must be taken seriously. PVARA will continue to collaborate with scholars as it develops a licensing framework in Pakistan and advances efforts in stablecoins and the tokenization of real-world assets.
U.S. Representative Josh Gottheimer, along with eight co-sponsors, has introduced a bipartisan bill requiring online sports betting platforms and prediction markets to verify users' age before login, wagering, or trading. The bill, named the Facial Recognition to Protect Children Act, applies to online gambling and prediction markets. Gottheimer's office stated that the relevant technology would read facial structure and patterns to estimate a user's age, without storing any personally identifiable or biometric information. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) classifies age estimation as facial analysis, not identification. NIST previously evaluated six age estimation algorithms, finding an average error of 3.1 years on the same visa photo database, with performance varying based on factors such as image quality, age, gender, and region of birth. The full text and bill number have not yet been made public, and details regarding enforcement agencies, penalties, technical standards, and appeal mechanisms remain unclear.
: Privacy blockchain Zano has announced that Zenith has entered the implementation phase, with a network transition planned for 2027, subject to testing, analysis, and review results. Zano has not yet announced an activation date, and the proposed operational parameters still require verification at the network level. Zenith will transition Zano from a hybrid PoW and PoS mechanism to a privacy-preserving pure PoS protocol. The proposed block time will be reduced from approximately 1 minute to about 15 seconds, the recommended number of confirmations will be lowered from 10 blocks to 4 to 6 blocks, and the typical confirmation time will be around 60 to 90 seconds. Andrey Sabelnikov, co-founder and core developer of Zano, stated that Zenith is based on over 12 years of privacy research, aiming to provide the network with the advantages of modern PoS while retaining the privacy protections that Zano users expect. PoW miners currently receive approximately 720 newly issued ZANO per day, equivalent to around 21,600 per month and 262,800 per year. After Zenith is activated and PoW mining ends, this issuance will be discontinued. Zano has also launched the official Zano Forum for technical discussions and community support.
: Crypto payment company BitPay announced that it has received approval from the Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets to obtain a crypto asset service provider license, allowing it to operate within EU member states under the Markets in Crypto-Assets regulatory framework. BitPay stated that this license will support the company in expanding services such as crypto payments and stablecoin payments across Europe. According to relevant requirements, starting July 1, all entities providing crypto-related services must be subject to regulation. Jonathan Arler, BitPay's Head of Europe, stated that Europe is one of the most important regions for the future development of payments. Previously, Ripple announced that it had obtained a crypto asset service provider license from the Luxembourg financial regulator.
tokenization platform Tradable plans to bring up to $1 billion in private credit assets onto the Stellar blockchain to expand institutional access to tokenized RWAs. The initiative is expected to launch with $500 million in nominal assets under management, with plans to increase to $1 billion over time. Tradable will leverage the Stellar network to support institutional functions such as compliance, investor onboarding, and asset lifecycle management. The specific launch date has not yet been disclosed. Tradable stated that it has already tokenized $1.7 billion in private credit assets across nearly 30 institutional-grade private credit positions. Stellar Development Foundation CEO Denelle Dixon noted that this agreement reflects growing institutional interest in using the Stellar network for tokenized RWAs. Stellar has recently focused increasingly on tokenized RWAs and has attracted institutional partners such as the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is investigating a potential insider trading incident involving the prediction market platform Kalshi. A staff member allegedly responsible for operating President Trump's teleprompter is accused of placing bets on related prediction event contracts.According to reports, this individual may have used early access to information about Trump's public remarks to wager on the Kalshi platform regarding whether Trump's related statements would be released or contain specific phrasing. Currently, the CFTC is investigating whether the relevant trades involved the use of non-public information and whether they violated prediction market trading rules.This investigation has once again raised market concerns about the risk of insider trading in prediction markets. As trading volumes on platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket grow rapidly, prediction contracts involving political, economic, and public events are increasingly coming under regulatory scrutiny. (CNBC)
: X platform product lead Nikita Bier announced that the platform is upgrading the anti-cheat mechanism of its Creator Revenue Share Program, targeting engagement baiting and content plagiarism.Bier stated that if an account posts "engagement baiting" content multiple times—such as "reply to me and I'll follow everyone" or similar actions to solicit engagement—cumulatively three times or more, it will be removed from the creator revenue share program and referred to the policy team for further action, including the risk of account suspension. Currently, X has identified such behaviors through the Grok AI system, and nearly 4,000 accounts have been removed from the revenue program today.Additionally, X's updated content identification model can detect duplicate content three times more efficiently than before. The platform stated that merely adding watermarks, intros, or making simple modifications will not qualify for revenue. The related commercial display revenue will be returned to the original content poster. This mechanism also applies to copying popular text posts, such as high-engagement content like "Twitter is the smoking area of the internet."According to Nikita Bier, during this detection cycle, X found approximately 1.5 million instances of stolen content. For accounts that repeatedly or deliberately attempt to evade detection, the platform will revoke their creator revenue eligibility.X stated that through these governance measures, it is expected that over $1 million in revenue will be redistributed to original content creators, aiming to improve the quality of the platform's content ecosystem.
Odaily Odaily Planet Daily Report: The Clarity Act will establish clear federal rules for centralized platforms, brokers, dealers, and custodians used by consumers to buy, sell, and hold digital assets. These rules cover registration, supervision, disclosure, custody, asset segregation, market integrity, conflicts of interest, fraud prevention, and bankruptcy. Nearly four years after the collapse of FTX, many consumers are still unable to confirm where their assets are held, whether those assets are separated from platform funds, or how their assets would be handled if the company fails. Regulators, bankruptcy courts, and law enforcement agencies subsequently addressed these issues.
U.S. prosecutors have disclosed that a federal grand jury has indicted Benjamin Paul Wiener, a crypto investor from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, on 29 criminal charges, including wire fraud, money laundering, bank fraud, and aggravated identity theft, involving approximately $20 million.According to the indictment, Wiener, 43, is accused of inducing investors, through false statements, to invest funds and digital assets into multiple companies under his control, with victims spanning South Dakota and Minnesota and involving dozens of investors. Prosecutors allege that after obtaining the funds, Wiener transferred assets through banks and cryptocurrency exchanges to conceal the source, ownership, and control of the funds, and used part of the money for personal expenses.Prosecutors further allege that when cash flow became tight or investors demanded redemptions, Wiener would recruit new investors and use the incoming funds to repay earlier investors, with the operation resembling a Ponzi scheme. It is reported that he utilized eight companies, including multiple LLCs, to carry out these activities.Additionally, Wiener is accused of fabricating documents and communication records in April 2025, and using another person's identity to fraudulently obtain a $1 million line of credit from a financial institution in Sioux Falls.Wiener appeared in court on July 10 and pleaded not guilty to all charges. He was released after posting bail. The trial is expected to begin on September 15. Under U.S. law, wire fraud and money laundering carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, bank fraud carries a maximum of 30 years, and aggravated identity theft carries a mandatory consecutive sentence of at least two years. The IRS Criminal Investigation (IRS-CI) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are jointly investigating the case. (The Block)
Injective stated that it has submitted an application for transfer agent registration to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Transfer agents are responsible for maintaining official ownership records of securities and processing transfer changes; in traditional markets, this function is typically maintained off-chain by specialized institutions. This application aims to migrate this core market function on-chain, making the token itself the ownership record, thereby enabling tokenized securities to be registered and transferred within seconds and reducing intermediary verification steps.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has officially proposed new Regulation E-Delivery rules, planning to expand the use of electronic methods in securities information disclosure, allowing issuers, broker-dealers, investment advisers, and other institutions to provide information required by regulations to investors through electronic channels by default.
Odaily News Crypto brokerage firm Alpaca has announced the completion of a $135 million funding round to expand its tokenized stock infrastructure, connecting traditional U.S. equities to blockchain settlement rails. Alpaca has cleared or custodied approximately 94% of all tokenized U.S. stocks and currently holds over $1.5 billion in underlying stocks on behalf of its partners. Although stocks are tokenized, regulated companies are still required to hold the underlying equities and handle corporate actions, which remains a key constraint in this market.
Odaily U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren released a report stating that the Trump administration's reform measures at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) may have resulted in up to $26.5 billion in additional costs for American consumers.Warren stated that approximately $22.5 billion of this comes from the CFPB's repeal of policies limiting credit card late fees and bank overdraft fees, with the remaining roughly $4 billion stemming from the agency's abandonment of certain enforcement cases and consumer restitution agreements.The report notes that a previous CFPB rule limiting credit card late fees had planned to cap most late fees at $8, which was expected to save consumers about $10 billion annually. Furthermore, a new rule targeting overdraft fees had aimed to push banks to limit certain overdraft charges to $5.It is reported that Trump implemented sweeping changes at the CFPB, including staff cuts, pausing or reducing multiple enforcement actions, and rescinding some consumer protection rules enacted during the Biden era. Warren criticized that these reforms have weakened the CFPB's role as a consumer financial regulator, exposing consumers to more unfair fees and financial risks. Currently, the CFPB and the White House have not immediately responded to the allegations in Warren's report. (CNBC)
venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has announced an investment in Runta, a startup specializing in AI agent security. The company aims to help enterprises manage and constrain AI agents much like "raising a child." The specific amount of the investment has not been disclosed yet.Runta founder Guanlan Dai previously worked on the technical team at Cloudflare and served as a founding engineer at API connectivity startup Kong. He stated that AI agents share similarities with growing children: they possess the ability to autonomously execute tasks, but equally require boundaries, supervision, and permission management.Dai believes that just as parents childproof their homes and restrict access to credit cards for their children, enterprises also need to limit the important files AI agents can access, the scope of operations they are permitted to execute, and the amount of funds they can spend in a single instance.Runta is developing an "AI agent guardianship" infrastructure to help businesses manage the permissions, security risks, and behavioral boundaries of AI agents, thereby preventing autonomous AI systems from causing data leaks, erroneous operations, or financial losses while performing tasks.As enterprises increasingly deploy AI agents with autonomous decision-making capabilities, the need to establish a trustworthy and secure agent management system is becoming a new infrastructure requirement.Runta aims to become the "parental control layer" for the AI agent era, providing enterprises with capabilities such as agent identity management, permission control, risk limitation, and operational oversight.Industry insiders believe that as AI agents evolve from simple assistants into autonomous entities capable of operating enterprise systems, handling transactions, and executing complex tasks, the infrastructure market surrounding agent security, governance, and compliance is poised for rapid growth. (The Information)
Odaily News, Crypto journalist Eleanor Terrett analyzed that the US Senate recently passed a resolution opposing the pardon of FTX founder SBF unanimously. The resolution, co-sponsored by Senators Ruben Gallego and Cynthia Lummis, serves to record the Senate's opposition to pardoning SBF publicly. The analysis points out that this resolution is merely a political statement, carries no legal binding force, cannot restrict the US President's power to grant pardons, and will not alter the current judicial process of the SBF case.
Coinbase officially announced that the regulated derivatives clearing business of UK financial services group Marex has now formally supported the use of USDC as Initial Margin collateral. This marks the first entry of a stablecoin into the actual operational processes of traditional clearing infrastructure. The first transaction was completed by Prime Trading, LLC, with Coinbase providing the underlying infrastructure support, including custody services, 1:1 instant conversion between fiat currency and USDC, and a customized daily reporting system that meets clearing industry standards.The implementation of this business was made possible by a "No-Action Letter" issued by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in December 2025. This policy opens the door for Futures Commission Merchants (FCMs) to accept stablecoins, Bitcoin, and Ethereum as client margin collateral.Coinbase stated that USDC, as a collateral asset, can provide round-the-clock liquidity, helping institutions break free from the limitations of traditional banking hours, allowing margin funds to be transferred in line with market operating hours. In this partnership, the core capabilities provided by Coinbase include:24/7 instant conversion between fiat currency and USDC: Institutional clients can convert between USD and USDC at any time, improving the efficiency of margin allocation;Customized reporting system: Meets the requirements of traditional clearing systems for asset recording, reconciliation, and regulatory reporting;NYDFS-compliant custody: Provides institutional-grade security for USDC collateral assets.